Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School Gears Up for Expansion with new classrooms from SM Foundation

Monday, November 14, 2016

BAGUIO CITY - The Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School has set its sights to expand to Junior High School in 2017 as SM Foundation turned over a brand new, two-storey school building on Friday, November 11.

The new school building comes with four fully-furnished classrooms with a total of 200 armchairs, 4 teacher’s desk sets, 16 wall fans, 8 blackboards, 4 wall clocks, and 4 toilets. SM Foundation recognizes the need to help close the gap of the quality of education between private and public schools by providing the proper environment that is conducive for learning.

“Education is the greatest equalizer,” said Linda Atayde, SM Foundation Executive Director for Education Programs. “Numerous studies have shown that having a prepared environment that is conducive for learning boosts the child’s creativity, independent thinking and absorptive capacity. Through these fully-furnished, well-ventilated classrooms, we hope to aid the child’s learning experience to be more productive, enjoyable and comfortable.”

Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School has 900 students coming from about 13 barangays from Kinder to Grade 6. It is fortunate to have a campus with more than a hectare of land, with 9 school buildings. The new school building will be the 10th building in the campus which will serve as classrooms to the opening of Junior High in 2017. For the mean time, it will serve as laboratory rooms for different grade levels.

“Our dream is to be a full K-12 school,” said Danilo Gayao, Principal of Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School. “The new school building from SM Foundation makes the expansion to Junior High possible. We are now even more hopeful that it will eventually lead to the expansion to senior high.”

Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School also provides Alternative Learning System (ALS) to 300 students, including mothers and out-of-school youth, who hope to finish their schooling. It also serves as one of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)’s campuses.

“And in this, we thank SM for being a partner-stakeholder of DepEd’s vision to provide education for all,” Principal Gayao expressed with much gratitude.

This is SM Foundation’s 76th school building to date. It is the 5th school building in Baguio, others being Irisan Elementary School, Pinsao Elementary School, Josefa Carino Elementary School and Lucban Elementary School.

The SM group of companies has continuously supported Baguio and its nearby communities through the various programs of SM Foundation. Under its education arm, the Foundation currently supports 77 college scholars and 40 tech-voc scholars with its Scholarship Program. Other initiatives the Foundation has conducted in the area over the years include medical missions for over 19,973 patients, the renovation and upgrade of 3 health centers and 2 hospitals, and five farmers trainings for 536 farmers. Additionally, SM Foundation recently turned over 10,000 fully-grown trees in Benguet under its Grow-A-Million Trees project. These trees will not only help in greening the area but will also provide additional livelihood to the community.